CONTEMPORARY ART MONTH (ŠMM) IN KLAIPĖDA – FOUR IMPRESSIVE FESTIVALS

For the sixth time, Klaipėda declares September as CONTEMPORARY ART MONTH (ŠMM), presenting contemporary creators of theater and music, cinema and fashion. From September to mid-October, the BLON animation and video game festival, the international arts festival “Plartforma”, the Klaipėda Concert Hall contemporary music festival “Permainų muzika”, the Klaipėda Cultural Communication Center and the international cultural festival of the Klaipėda County Ieva Simonaitytė Public Library invite you to get acquainted with contemporary art. Inculturation”.

BLON experiments and experiences

September 7-10 The international animation and video game festival BLON returns to Klaipėda for the ninth time. The festival, which is growing every year, this year offers an exclusive program of animation, video games and virtual reality experiences, which is full of works by creators from Lithuania and foreign countries.

“In the virtual reality program, we have 9 very strong works from all over the world, talking about important and relevant topics. One such topic is autism. After putting on the virtual reality glasses, you can feel what autistic children are going through,” says Laura Almantaitė, head of the BLON festival.

Organized for the ninth year, the festival is the only event in the Baltic States that unites professionals and fans of video games, digital art and animation. During the festival, the audience will be presented with the latest award-winning feature films and short animated films, several competitive film programs will be organized, an international exhibition of VR works and a video game exhibition and awards will be held. The video game awards “Aware Game Awards” are organized for the first time at the festival, the winner will be chosen by an international jury. According to Artūrs Rumiancevs, who oversees the video game program, during the formation of this year’s game program, a lot of attention was paid to games that draw attention to various relevant topics, from personal experiences to global or social issues.

Festival events will take place in 7 Klaipėda locations: Culture Factory, HOFE, KKKC Exhibition Hall, ArleKine, 10 Bridges Cafe, 10 Bridges Yard, Pidžin Animation Studio.

Plartforma Festival – let the game begin

One of the biggest contemporary art festivals not only in Klaipėda, but also in the whole of Lithuania – the international arts festival “Plartforma”, returns this year with the slogan – let the game begin. Movement and sound are two poles that form the programmatic axis of this year’s festival, intertwining and interacting in various ways from September 13 to October 28. Searching for balance or, on the contrary, passionately debating, the organizers of the festival – the group of artists “Zuvies akis” – invite the audience to question their relationship with themselves and the environment around us.

The opening of the festival on September 13 invites you to the Klaipėda Drama Theater, where the French circus group Sous le Manteau’s performance “The Mikado, Little Tales of the Fall” will take place. The performance, on stage, replicates the structure of the bars supported by the game “Mikado” – six acrobats are ready for the craziest challenges.

Among the rich program of the festival, the dance performance “A little more” (Zoé Bernabéu and Lorenzo Covello), which has received several important awards in Italy, will be shown in Klaipėda on October 27, having previously visited the audiences of Kretinga and Priekulė. The performance is a study of balance, when one aims to approach the limits, just before the breaking point, it is a balance between two minds, two bodies, between words and movements. Love as a bet, as a test, as an opportunity for physical and emotional metamorphosis. A little more and everything would fall apart.

Dark Matter, a shadow theater and live music performance by the French troupe Compagnie Fleur Lemercier, is about one of the most uncertain topics in physics, shrouded in uncertainty and uncertainty, but at the same time stimulating curiosity and artistic imagination. Spectators, whose age is not limited, during the entire performance – September 30. and October 1, are invited to move freely and change their point of view, thanks to which the stage becomes a creative and interactive playground.

This year, the Festival of Sound Art Archaeologists is offering a meeting with one of the most interesting creators of this genre in Lithuania – Audrius Šimkūnas (aka Sala). The creator, who has been working in the field of sound art for several decades, will reside in Klaipėda at the beginning of October, where he will collect and record the sounds of the city’s environment. October 28 the maps of sounds collected by him will turn into an original sound composition “Unheard Klaipėda” and a visual concert, the premiere of which will be the closing event of the festival in an unconventional space.

Events of Klaipėda Cultural Communication Center

at the Klaipėda Cultural Communication Center from August 24. until October 15 a personal exhibition of Robert Narkaus will be waiting (curator Neringa Bumblienė). During the exhibition, there will be an audio guide, special education for school classes.

The exhibition opens on September 21 – Dorothy Bohm, a famous photography artist of Litvak origin living in the United Kingdom. The exhibition exhibits black and white and color images illustrating different stages of the artist’s work, aesthetically impressive and deeply human images, which capture the people and landscapes of a rapidly changing world.

As every month, the KKKC art workshop (Daržų st. 10) will host many educational activities for children, families, and adults, led by: graphic designer Žaneta Jasaitytė-Bessonova, Klaipėda branch of the Lithuanian Union of Photographic Artists, Edgaras Janušauskas (3D design and printing), Ilja Yakovlev (board game designer, designer).

Another KKKC initiative is gaining momentum – an art residency. “Every month we have many exhibitions and activities related to contemporary art. We want to be very happy that the residency program has taken off, thanks to which artists from Lithuania and abroad come. There will be a collective walk around the city and a creative workshop with the Greek artist Mary Marinopoulou,” said Žana Jegorova, deputy director for cultural activities of the Klaipėda Cultural Communication Center.

Mary Marinopoulou, an audiovisual installation artist and curator from Greece, will be in residence at KKKC in September. The artist will invite the residents of the city to explore the city of Klaipėda together and will present her project “Absorb Ensemble”. Tereza Novakova, an art curator and researcher from the Czech Republic, will also be a guest at the residence at the end of September, who will invite Klaipėda communities to get involved in the creation of the city game.